


Meaningless

by WolfAndHound_Archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, First War with Voldemort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 13:23:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5930032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfAndHound_Archivist/pseuds/WolfAndHound_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It was all so meaningless, but everything could be considered meaningless now."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meaningless

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Lassenia, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Wolf and Hound](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Wolf_and_Hound), which was created to make stories posted to the Sirius_Black_and_Remus_Lupin Yahoo! mailing list easier to find. However, even though I still love the fandom, I am no longer active in it and do not have the time to maintain it. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in December 2015. I posted an announcement with Open Doors, but we may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on the [Wolf and Hound collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/wolfandhound/profile).

TITLE: Meaningless

AUTHOR: Maple Tide

E-MAIL: mapletide@fastmail.fm

DISCLAIMER: The characters involved that are from the Harry Potter universe are the property of J. K. Rowling and all associated publishers (including Scholastic Press, Bloomsburg, and Raincoast). I'm just borrowing them for my own nefarious purposes. The plot involved, any stray characters that may crop up, and any other things that don't belong to her belong to me. I'm not seeking to make any money off of this; rather I'm going it for fun and for the chance to get it out of my own imagination before it drives me even more insane. Understood? =) Good.

RATING: PG-13

CATEGORY: Angst, Post Remus/Sirius

KEYWORDS: Remus, angst, glitter

SPOILERS: PS/SS, PoA

ARCHIVE: Azkaban's Lair, Glitterific, Snitchfiction, and Fandomination, please. It'll go up on Marauder Me as well, but anyone else, please ask ;)

FEEDBACK: Please? I can be reached at mapletide@fastmail.fm

SUMMARY: "It was all so meaningless, but everything could be considered meaningless now."

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Well, this was a plotbunny that pounced on me and bit down while I was listening to Roxy Music's "Dance the Night Away". Don't ask me why, since the song's about something else. Anyway, of course it demanded that it be written. It seemed just enough of a different view of the Remus that existed right after that night in 1981, so I decided to go with it. Here's hoping it's not too out of character.

Oh, and another note: this story techically comes before "The Closer the Tides Bend" although it's not obvious and this one obviously does not need to be read before the second. There will be a third one that's more hopeful than either this one or the other, but will tie them together.

**~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~**

It was all so meaningless, but everything could be considered meaningless now.

Remus Lupin summoned to him a mirror and the old things, the things that he had worn back when he had believed Sirius to be an innocent, back when he believed the two of them, the whole of their entire group to be entirely unstoppable. However, recent events had proven how wrong they had turned out to be. So now, while the wizarding population had taken to the streets in celebration, a young child was to be left virtually unprotected, no matter what certain esteemed wizards might believe, and he who had been abandoned by the betrayal and the deaths, sat alone in a flat made for two.

With hands he forced into steadiness, he raised the kohl pencil to his eyes, applying with expert precision the line of makeup. He still wanted to close his eyes tight for even thinking about doing this, but somehow he didn't. The self- inflicted lines appeared around his eyes in short work, and it really wasn't fair.

He was never able to do this to his own satisfaction when things were good, so now that things had gone so horribly wrong, of course he managed to do as close as he ever got to a perfect job. It might have made him angry in other times, but now all he could manage was a resigned sigh as he reached for the glitter.

Technically it was all over now, but they had known places, little patches where the love of this was kept alive. Sirius had said once, in one of his more flamboyant moments, that there had be some places where it was kept alive, and the high gods of glitter and glam were still properly worshipped. He was still right, still **so** right, but now everything else had gone wrong, and it even hurt to think about him.

He made himself stop, and then he added the glitter. Just enough, just there, spread across the eyelids. It wasn't enough to be gaudy or terrible, but it was enough for it to be there, just there, obviously. He then reached for the flares, for the clothes especially made for dancing.

They used to dance. Dance until they were numb, couldn't breathe, until their feet ached with it, and there were kisses stolen away in the night. Glitter- drenched kisses that would start just like this, just now. He would stand in front of the full-length mirror, and fuss over the clothes until they fit just right, just so. Then those arms would come out of bloody nowhere, and hands would take a grasp on his arms and in an expression of dark hair, glitter and kohl, he would indicate that it was time to stop fussing, and time to start dancing.

They danced the night away, then, only to wake up and start fighting the evil all over again. It was right, and it was their rituals for banishing the pain enough so that they got up the next day to fight. Only those rituals, they fell away as the distrust grew.

Now, it was truly over. From the news, they were to officially commit Sirius to Azkaban on the morn, and on top of the events only days ago, it seemed to drive the community further into celebration and himself further into the quiet grief for all they had lost.

He closed his eyes and told himself that he would not cry over this. He would put up the strong front and have just one more night of the sort he would never have indulged himself with before. Dance until the night turned to day, until the pain had been numbed just a little bit. Dance, and find a partner to dance with until he could no longer see Sirius's face.

As he looked in the mirror, Remus realised that he would have to do more than one night of dancing before he could get that to fade. That face, those eyes, that taste. Knowing his luck, it would haunt him for the remainder of his days.

Putting all thoughts of that out of his mind, he turned back to the mirror and scrutinised his appearance. Somewhere in the back of his mind, for all the denial and the pain, he still found that it was impossible to look into that mirror with him looking as he did, and not to expect to see those arms wind around his waist, and hum a line or two of Bowie into his ear, or T. Rex, or any of the other bands that they had been listening to since school.

The knowledge that it would never be that way again pained him, but he finished the last touches on the outfit and turned away.

He tucked his wand away and went out the door, trying to remember what it was like to walk in those shoes. People on the street looked at him as though he was something strange, something entirely alien. He was, and that was a fact that was irreversible, only quite obviously not the way they thought he was.

Remus smiled at them, and a flash of the past nearly knocked him sideways. Only, instead of it making him feel weaker, he used it to strengthen his resolve, and he posed, much as Sirius would have in years past. A shake of his head let a shower of glitter fall to the ground, which one of the Muggle children brightened at the sight of.

He smirked faintly as the child's mother dragged her away in fright, as though afeared he would call her to him, and she would follow him as though he was the pied piper of all the glitterchildren of the next generation. He smiled at the thought and tucked it away at the back of his mind for looking upon later; he liked the thought more than he was willing to admit at that moment.

Then he moved onward, and wasn't disturbed until he got to the location of that night's dance. There was a line of people already there, and he waited in line, listening to people whisper, listening to them talk, and tuning them out. He was lost in his own thoughts until he got to the door, and the music spilled out from the inside. A part of a lyric caught his mind, caught his heart and he froze for a moment before walking inside.

"Dance away the heartache..."

Yes. That's what he was planning to do.

It was all he **could** do, he thought, in a word where everything was lost forever, and that which somehow managed to keep from being lost was rendered forever meaningless without any hope of any meaning returning to it all.

So he answered the call of the music, and danced. Danced until it was all as meaningless to him as it was to the rest of the world. Danced until he was numb, and could fade away, just for a little while.

Only then did he stop, only then did he slow down.

Only then did he allow himself to fade away.

**~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~**

-end-


End file.
